Investigating the temporal and spatial pattern of landscape disturbances is an important requirement for modeling ecosystem characteristics, including understanding changes in the terrestrial carbon cycle or mapping the quality and abundance of wildlife habitats. Data from the Landsat series of satellites have been successfully applied to map a range of biophysical vegetation parameters at a 30 m spatial resolution, the Landsat 16 day revisit cycle, however, which is often extended due to cloud cover, can be a major obstacle for monitoring short term disturbances and changes in vegetation characteristics through time.

Landsat, MODIS, change detection, disturbance, synthetic imagery, STARFM, STAARCH, data blending, EOSD